My Second Annual 25th Birthday

So this Thursday is my birthday. I'm not completely ready to be closer to 30 than 20, so I've decide to celebrate my 2nd Annual 25th birthday instead! While I've had many naysayers, I personally think that this is a genius idea because I can keep up this trend for as long as I'd like.

Necessary Growing Pains

Growing (up) isn’t always a pain-free process. It can be so painful that you just want to curl up into a ball and quit sometimes. But then I think of the following story:

THE STORY OF THE BUTTERFLY

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly.
One day a small opening appeared.
He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours
as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole.
Then it stopped, as if it couldn’t go further.

So the man decided to help the butterfly.
He took a pair of scissors and
snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon.
The butterfly emerged easily but
it had a swollen body and shriveled wings.
The man continued to watch it,
expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge
and expand enough to support the body,
Neither happened!

In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life
crawling around.
It was never able to fly.
What the man in his kindness
and haste did not understand:

The restricting cocoon and the struggle
required by the butterfly to get through the opening
was a way of forcing the fluid from the body
into the wings so that it would be ready
for flight once that was achieved.

Sometimes when I think, “God, why can’t You just step in and help me out here?!” I think that God wants me to remember that the pain of today is just the experience that I’ll need to fight tomorrow’s battles. Naiveté hasn’t helped me much thus far, so why would I want to continue on that way?

A big part of growing up has been learning this lesson (something that I continue to do each day.) As time goes on though, and yesterday’s tests become today’s testimonies, I realize that it hasn’t all been in vain, God hasn’t ever left me out to dry, and I have more strength than I ever imagined, to push forward each and every day. And that’s DEFINITELY something to praise God for!

Thank you Lord for each new day that You present me with. Thank you for trusting me with that which I see as challenges, but that You know are just growing pains. Thank you for watching over me and being ready to step in if I really need, but trusting in my ability to figure it out.

Grown (Up) Relationship...

Ask a random group of teenagers today, "What makes a relationship a mature adult relationship?", and I'm sure at least some of them will answer with one word: SEX. I feel differently though. I feel that I had one of the most mature conversations with that dude recently. It wasn't an easy subject to bring up in conversation, but we sat down and discussed the fact that we do not want this relationship to get physical. If you've read my previous posts, you know that I wasn't having sex in my last relationship either, so this conversation may seem like it should've been an easy one for me. The truth though is that we were abstaining by my choice only. This fact became more apparent with each day that passed. Eventually the passive aggressiveness turned into hurtful words every time I'd refuse to even discuss sex as an option. I felt like I was making a good decision, but I began to wonder if t was even worth it. Thank goodness, I chose to turn to The Word for advice instead giving into the pressure. Once I was strengthened in the Lord, it really was smooth sailing like never before.

Fast forward to That Dude and I. I wasn't even sure how to begin, but once I started, I was able to get all of my feelings out and a good explanation of, why it was a good idea to wait. When I was done, I got an answer that I definitely wasn't prepared for, "Good, because I was thinking the same thing. I think it's important that we wait." WHAT?! I don't have to put together a PowerPoint presentation? I don't have to justify it? I don' have to answer a million questions? This all seemed too easy! We've discussed it further after the initial conversation and we're honest with each other that it won't always be the easiest to follow through on, but it will ALWAYS be worth it!

God Redeems in His Time...

As you know, I was debating the idea of dating someone new. Well, after LOTS of prayer and communication, I've entered the "DATING" stage with someone new. He's been a good friend for quite a few years and we've decided together to take this step.

In answer to the most common questions from the few people who know that we're dating:

• Yes he's a Christian and has a SERIOUS love for Jesus
• He's one of my closest friends, so this was an almost natural progression in our relationship
• He's hard-working and has some great goals and dreams
• We've agreed to try to take things slowly, so no, we don't have any big plans for the future yet! (I just want to add a note here to say that one of my issues with some Christians and their dating habits is that they want things to be PERFECT before getting into a relationship and they set up these ridiculous expectations for the requirements before dating and then when they do start dating, they want to get married like a week later! This is NOT us!! We like each other's company. We like each other as people. We're just enjoying that for now!)

As for my title, I just want to say that I know that there are people who will not agree with me dating someone new a month and a half after ending things with T, but I've really prayed about this and asked God for guidance and really dug into The Word and over and over, I feel that God is giving me peace in this decision. Over and over, throughout the bible, we see that things happen in GOD's time, not the time limits placed by man. I know that God wants nothing more than my happiness and I truly believe that if I proceed forward with this using God as my compass, I'll be led in the right direction.

This is especially important as part of my Growing (Up) series of posts because until recently, I've made 90% of my decisions based on the words, actions, and thoughts of others! The fact that I'm willing to make this decision against the well wishes of some people really shows me that I've come a long way in life!

Money Matters...

I recently made the decision to roll over a 403b into a 401k. Of course, I had the option of rolling over into an IRA, but 401k was the obvious choice you see...

And now for those of you who haven't closed the window/clicked away to another site/fallen asleep... I have no idea what I'm talking about, but the above statement is true! Through my job's benefits package, I was given the option of signing up for a 403b. I didn't really know much about what that meant except for what the representative explained at the presentation. I knew that part of my money would be going into an account that would fund different companies. I knew that the money would partially go to stocks and the rest into some other kind of "safer" investments. And I knew that if I ever wanted to get this money back before I retired, it would probably take lots of paperwork and headaches! But everyone said it was a good idea to begin investing towards my financial future, so I signed up.

Now, a few months in, my organization is beginning the process of slowly breaking away from the parent organization, so we're being offered new companies for health benefits and apparently a new investment package. My organization STILL isn't matching my investment, but apparently there's a bunch of paperwork and the money that I've already put into the original package still can't be touched, so I have to "roll it over" (I'm sorry, did I invest in a dog and not know about it?) into another type of account.

I know that at some point I really should be checking this thing, but I get a headache just thinking about it (in fact, can someone PLEASE pass me a Tylenol???) I get the quarterly statements and don't even open them! They could have slipped me a check for a million dollars in one of their mailings and it would go untouched.

As for REAL money (I'm sorry, but money that comes out of my check before I even see it and I can't touch til I'm 70 just doesn't count as "real" money in my book!) I'm working on spending better. It's been difficult, but I think I'm getting there. I'm going to go back to writing down everything that I spend so that I have some idea of why my bank account is almost near empty on a regular basis, and then hopefully I'll see some places where I can cut.

Any money saving tips? Any thoughts on grown ups having to be "money-minded"? Any thoughts on money in general? You know what to do!

It Was Already On My Mind...

I think a good place to begin is with a Facebook note that I wrote last year:

Sunday, October 26, 2008 at 4:41pm

(Title)Things are slowly moving quickly...?

Time is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately. It seems that while there's so much time ahead of me, I'm beginning to wonder where the time has flown for the last 25 years. I think about where I expected to be by age 25 and realize that I'm far from the goals that I had set for myself even 1 or 2 years ago. Am I just being frivolous with time? Should I be putting my foot down and setting some more realistic goals - and then actually attaining them? Or should I stop thinking so much about what's to come and just live a more 'carpe diem' kind of life?

I was recently reminded by someone MUCH smarter than me, that 25 is one of those weird, in-between, hard-to-figure-out ages, cuz you are constantly being reminded that there's so much life left to live, and how little you have to worry about (sorry, does ANYONE over age 30 remember what 25 was really like?), but you're also bombarded with reminders that you're an adult and need to act as such. At this point, I just want everyone to come to a consensus cuz you're confusing the hell out of me and I just can't take it anymore!

Anyone else out there having a quarter-life crisis?